Archive for January, 2010

There are two upcoming art exhibits that I wanted to enter. The first one is an exhibit called “Foot in the Door 4,” which is put on by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program every ten years. It’s open to all Minnesota artists, and the only guideline is that all works have to be 12″ x 12″ or less. The second one is the 6x6x2010 exhibit held at the Rochester Contemporary Arts Center in New York. All art must measure 6″ x 6″, and the work is sold for $20 each, with the profits going back into the arts center. As far as I know, all work submitted is exhibited.

I wanted to create a new piece to submit to the exhibits, so I decided to create an illustration of my new favourite person, Lady Gaga. I love her music, I love her style, and I think she’s just really interesting. So, I decided to channel my modern-day pop art powers and create an illustration of her. I started off with a drawing — a very simple sketch — and scanned it into the computer. From there, I did some work in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop to finish it up, and I’m happy with the results. I’ll print off a 6″ x 6″ version for the 6x6x2010 exhibit, and I’ve created an alternate 8″ x 10″ version to use for the “Foot in the Door 4” exhibit. Awesome. I hope people like it.

I’m going to get verification that all submitted works are exhibited, and then I’ll provide information about the exhibits.

The most wonderful, and also the most terrible words a designer can hear are, “Do whatever you like. I trust you.” On one hand, that means the options are limitless. On the other hand…the options are limitless, and it can be difficult to figure out which direction to go. Typically, I love hearing those words if I’m familiar with the client in some way. That way, I can let their work inspire me to create my own.

This was the case when Mach FoX approached me about designing the album artwork for “Best Mistake.” I had ideas for a certain look I wanted to achieve, but wasn’t sure how to execute it, exactly. I wanted something that was sort of futuristic and abstract, yet had some roughness to it — nothing too “shiny.” I found a fantastic photo of broken glass by Pavel Matousek that just struck me — it was perfect. I added some additional “decaying” to the photo with some brushes, and used a texture from Alexander Synaptic, which was actually an image of a rooftop. I found his photos when I was searching on Flickr for photos of abandoned houses and buildings in Detroit. Pretty interesting stuff!

The album should be available for download fairly soon. I’ll keep you posted on the details as I get them.

I finished the postcard design for Theatre Pro Rata‘s next production, The Spanish Tragedy. Again, I didn’t need to do much, as Charlie Gorrill did a fantastic job with the photography. I basically just added some text.

Performances begin in March, so if you’re in the Twin Cities area, you should go see it!